Ka Leo o ka Lahui, Volume II, Number 283, 18 September 1891 — ECHOES. [ARTICLE]

ECHOES.

The Commissioners of Crown Lands are entitled to public eommendatioii for their public spirited policj in opening up certain lands near Hilo for homestead settlers. and for the liberal terms whieh they offer. It 5s $ new <leparture, and if the first experiment prove successful, we trust it will be eontinued on lands etill unoccupied, or as ]eases expire on other suitable laads. In this way the sioners would heeome national benefaetors, asd would give a wise solution oi the questfon as to an 4ispositionof the Crown lands, which is botind to agitate the p\ibMe mind in the future. We firmly believe that this method of distributing this vast estate among a desirable class of settlers, while adding to the material wealth and prosperity of the naiion, will also eventually increaieth?Crown Land j xevenues many fold. It will alepl make an easier transition from | tenant to paroprietor. when the government is in better position to legislate for this purpose. We wish the Commissioners s all the deserved success in their new venture.

But what a lesson the Crown Commissioners are reading to tbe present administration. Without the spur of law, but simply from intelligent motives, the Commissiqpers are doing what the Jaw and the Legislature ordered our ministers to do. But the 4, weak' r Cabinet cannot rise to the patriotic and eeonomie principles wnieh pervaded and animated the National Party andthe Legislature of 1890, as the previous Thurston Itegiuae. The Gabinet appear to have adopted Vanderbill } s famous sentiment u damn ihepublic." With astonishing bolduec»s, they have offered for lease huge tracts of valuable government lands at ridiculously low fignres, with the apparenfc purpose of furnishing alandgrabbingpicriic fsr the wealthy sugar baron3, to the exclusion of the homeiiteader or small farmer. The annoi]ncement of the resqjt of the sale of these leases, showing S. Parker as one of the pripcipal succes«fui bidders would seem to indicate that at leaae one minister does rtot believe that "puhlie office is a piihlie trust." The Queen's Commission is not a boodler's license.

Of course the sugar barons do Dot agree with us in our eeonomie theories of the partition of the pubiie lands among Btnall holders. They seem uncompromisingly eommitted to the policy of creating large istates in the hand of a political plutocracy wbo are to be supported by servi>|e/labor. Probably they laok to Cuba aniL Māinia as their ideal paradise. Their ideas, their j>olicy are incompatible with the enlightened theories that guarantee to all nien Wife v ltt>erty and happiness" and that creates a prosperous nnd civilized state of the Peopk for the People. We respect and enterprise of the havē nuuie our wasty places to;flow with saccharine and have <3otted the country with mills thnt hum with industry v but we would eheek their selfish grees for land and wealth at the expenge of the nation, and the populaiion. Some system ef oooperation in the planting and mill intereats as existB jn a meaeure at Waiooanalo

and at Pacrfic Sugar MiU* Hamakua, is more nearly in $ceord with the policy we would advocate,

That amateurish statesman, Thurston, who is at the same time the ideal and the genuxs of the Missionary Reform Party, has again been airing his notions before a Chieago reporter. Under cever of quoting a native paper (Ka Leo perBUmably) he shows the hand of his party in announcing to the Americau people that the Hawaiians are burning for annexation to the United States, or to form a republie. Leo has never advocated annextion in express terms, but has sounded many notes of warmg -that such a result might be precipitated as the result of the errors of cabinets and monarchs. Some of Ka Leo's art3cles, it ig true, have been strbngly tinged with an under-cUrrent of desire for a republican form of government, this chiqfly for the puipose of feeeping our monarchial system within the bounds of eonstitutional methods, but our admonitions haye passed unheeded, and it is true that in Hawaii the People do not ruler The powers that be» have made this so rudely apnarent

ihat the impressionable native mind has been deeply impregnated with the spirit of popular government as evoked by Ka Leo's artiticles, and that they have heeome actively interested in the constitutional power and privileges ofthe lehukhu through the ballot, and.the sovereignty of the lahui as exem- ! plified in the rdpublican form of government in Ameiiea. As yet however the Hawaiians seem to | be wavering betweeu a popul£r monarchy as in England, and a rupuhliean rule by the people as ia America. But with the wave of democracy that seems to be undulating throughout theworld, itis impossible to predict what- our future, immediate or distant, is to be. A republic; or aßnexation to the \Jnited Statee on our own terms, j are possibilities of the future. But |only by and with & pkbiscite of the people. And certain it is that Thurston and his satellites, in their present shadow, ean never lead! such a movement. In the years to leome, this idol of the missionaries | |Ynay materializa into a statesmasi who may render valuabl« servioe»! |to thie coantry, but as yet he is in a transition state, notyct far enough removed from the lariat and the cow-boy of the slopes of Haleakala. He haa pluek, euergy and intelligence and will always be found iu the front rank, but wiil nevei wm

his epurs, till he learns to break in« iependently olear ofthe hide~bound bigots, and misohievous plutocrats who have been his patrons. He must also leafn to rely _iuore 011 .|his own intelligence or upon men of mind and character ? mther than be the tody an4 ally of such a false |and treacherou? maaeoi a? played the fool with ;his «dministration; we mean he of the limbs. Vitlf beak no£e, set bctween a little pair of vicious groon oyee v under a narrow forehead; a hoodoo who appears to wreck and ruin all who pin their faith on him. Whon the milleninm, whieh Profeseor Totten declares is now upon ue, haB been accomplished, and the cataclysm hae swept all tbe falat prophets and poUticians out of existence, tho idol may then appear

1•• • • as a £himng ligbt, an w orb w tliai t,he BiiMetia may worehip.